‘If the Withdrawal Agreement is approved, then Parliament will be asked to legislate to give domestic legal effect to its content through the EU (Withdrawal Agreement) Bill. One of the most significant provisions of the Withdrawal Agreement, Article 4, purports to give the entire contents of the Withdrawal Agreement special status within the UK’s constitutional order. Even though the UK would no longer be a Member State, the effect of Article 4 (if implemented) would be to give all of the laws within the Withdrawal Agreement the equivalent legal effect of EU law within a Member State. As a result, the Protocol on Ireland and Northern Ireland (the Protocol), which forms part of the Withdrawal Agreement, would be supreme over any other domestic legislative provisions, and any provisions of the agreement which meet the conditions for direct effect would have direct effect. How the UK courts would be able to enforce this status will be determined by how the UK Parliament decides to legislate to give effect to Article 4 in the EU (Withdrawal Agreement) Act. It is probable that the Government will propose to give the courts the power to disapply domestic legislation inconsistent with the Withdrawal Agreement by replicating the effect of the European Communities Act 1972 (ECA 1972). Article 4 of the WA, as explored below, already includes the obligation to disapply provisions that contravene EU law. This post looks at the questions that might be raised if a UK court was ever asked to disapply domestic legislation on the basis that it was inconsistent with the Protocol. The potential constitutional effect of Article 4 is worth considering in view of the short time that Parliament is likely to have to consider the EU (Withdrawal Agreement) Bill. While the UK courts have been able to disapply domestic legislation since the European Communities Act 1972 (this power was more more fully explored in Benkharbouche v Sec’y of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs in 2017 – see Alison Young’s helpful 2017 blog post on the outcome) was enacted, what is constitutionally novel about Article 4 is the proposal that the courts would be able to do so when the UK is no longer a Member State.’

‘Significant budgetary restraints. A significant deficit in the public finances. Does that all sound familiar? It is a feature not only in the United Kingdom but also in the Republic of Ireland. It is the context of Case C-154/18, Horgan and Keegan v Minister for Education and Skills, in which the Second Chamber of the ECJ gave Judgment on 14 February 2019, on a reference from the Irish Labour Court.’

‘The Birmingham coroner is to decide later whether to reopen inquests into the victims of the 1974 IRA pub bombings. But one former member of the terror group says the men behind the attacks will never be brought before a court.’

‘The Court of Appeal has cleared the way for the Government to apply for controversial secret court hearings as it faces being sued for damages by an IRA informant and Iranians subjected to asset freezing orders.’

‘The Secretary of State was not required by Parliament and Council Directive 2001/92/EC to conduct a transboundary consultation with the Republic of Ireland before granting planning permission to construct a nuclear power station near the Irish state if he was convinced that it was not “likely to have significant effects on the environment in another member state”, within article 7 of the Directive.’